easier to run
by mako-lies
Summary: Vaan has trouble coping with all that has changed.


Sometimes, when he looks at her, she knows that he expects to see someone else.

* * *

><p>Her hands clasp the pen that will never be a sword, and she turns her gaze from the sky, from the clouds where he might be right now, and back to her ink stained hands. The sword callus is fading surely as the corruption fades from Dalmasca's sands.<p>

Ashe lets out a breath, tries to focus on the words that blur beneath her gaze, and she wipes at her eyes, heavy-lidded with want of sleep. But she has endured far worse than this, and that is what matters, is it not? She knows she can endure, so she will. But even shifting in her seat does little to make her attentive, and she finds herself wishing again for the simplicity of before, of motion, of a goal so easily bought by drive and sweat and blood.

Wincing, she sets aside her pen, and rubs at her eyes, takes care not to get ink in them, and rises.

Rest. She needs rest. In order to rule her country, as has been her goal for so long, she must be in top mental condition. No matter what she has lost, no matter how foreign the chair beneath her feels.

* * *

><p>Vaan comes to visit her again. He stands, haggard, at the entrance of her bedroom, and she does not think to ask how he got here. It reminds her of when he'd sneak into her tent, eyes shadowed with regret of night and reaching out for anyone to understand.<p>

To this day, she is not sure why he chose her.

The dark circles under his eyes give him a hollow look, and she longs to reach out, clasp his face in her hands and feel his warmth. To assure herself that he is real, after all this time. (Two months, he hasn't been by in two months, and she wonders if that means they're no longer _friends_, but she fears to ask, because friendship is fleeting and foreign and she does not wish to jeopardize what she might have). "Vaan?" she asks, "No luck?"

She does not have to ask what he was doing.

Rubble and dust from the Bahamut cling to his skin, and she can't help but wonder why Penelo lets him keep going back when it's becoming more and more obvious that he will find nothing.

Vaan shakes his head and looks at her hands.

The ink stains on them are fresh, and he looks back at her with an expression that suggests he's still trying to figure out how she can hold a pen. He takes in her full appearance, and she shifts, because she is not the person he knew. He knew an Insurgent, not a Princess. Not the Queen she is becoming, and she does not know how to tell him that, while everything is different, he may still call her _Ashe_ and not be mistaken. She does not think he would believe her, in any case.

"Are you hungry?" she asks, her voice sounding strained even to her own ears.

Despite the fact he is no longer living on the streets, despite the fact the journey is done and its famine with it, he is still far too thin, and she wonders if he and Penelo have any gil at all. She clamps down on the question before she can ask it.

Ashe has offered aid before, and Vaan had laughed, saying to save it for her subjects.

It stings to know, sometimes, that Vaan and Penelo do not consider wanting her aid, but perhaps that is not how friendship works?

"Not really," he replies, finally, "Just wanted to drop in. Say hello."

Of course. He is a pirate now, she cannot expect him to do more than _drop in_, and she nods, says, "Hello."

Both of them look at each other for a time, and then he glances at a window, where sunlight is beginning to flicker through.

"I better run," he says, and is gone in the next breath.

She wishes he'd staid long enough for him to tell him he never stopped running from her since she took her kingdom back.

* * *

><p>Whenever he comes to visit, he sneaks into the palace through a passage even she has not heard of. The guards would let him in the front gates, but she thinks that knowledge scares him more than the idea of being caught does, for when she mentions it, he looks stricken, and then shrugs, shoulders tense.<p>

* * *

><p>Penelo never comes with him and Ashe notices the lack immediately but it takes her time before she can ask. "Vaan?" he's managed to sit today and he's smiling, though his leg's bouncing with either impatience or trepidation. "Where is Penelo?"<p>

She tries to keep her tone light, but he curls his fingers to a fist, then releases it.

"Visiting Filo and Kytes," he says, tries for a smile that she sees through.

It takes more will than it should to keep from sighing, and she feels the loss between them as an aching chasm, and then she stands, turns away from him to look out the window. "I see," she replies, and places her hands on the windowsill, grips it till she is white-knuckled.

"Thanks, A - " he pauses, "Thanks for helping the orphans. There aren't as many on the streets and it - means a lot. So. Thanks."

"Of course. They are my people," she says, twists her neck to look at him.

For a moment, he merely looks at her, a look she doesn't know how to read, and she wonders what has been changing in his life that he has not allowed her to be privy to, and then the expression fades and he says, "I should probably drop by to see them," and then he moves to leave in typical sky pirate fashion.

Ashe turns her attention back to the window.

* * *

><p>She writes half-letters to Basch. Every time she gets halfway through the letter, she sets it aside and stores it in her desk. Ashe writes whole letters to Vaan and Penelo that she burns before sending.<p>

However, she never gets farther than writing Fran and Balthier's names on a paper before she tears it, loss still too new for any emotion other than grief.

Larsa is the only one who actually hears from her. It is enough.

* * *

><p>The day after her ring is returned, Vaan appears in her chambers with a smile brighter than any she has seen in over a year. She tries to match it, and judges she does well enough by his laughter.<p>

Ashe tilts her head back to listen, because it feels like forever since she's heard Vaan laugh, and then the question that has been caught in her chest for a year blurts out before she can stop it. "Am I truly so different now?"

His laughter ceases, and, for a moment, he merely looks at her and then he averts his gaze. "I don't know," he says, "I guess... It just feels different, you know? Like, I never really thought about the fact you lived in the big building all the orphans were scared to get close to. I never really thought about the fact that you couldn't grab a sword and come adventuring whenever you wanted to."

With each word, his voice gets quieter, his words slower, and then she nods.

"I understand," she says, because she _does_.

She remembers what living in Lowtown felt like, remembers what helplessness felt like, remembers how she watched her people suffer _every day_ and could do _nothing_. She remembers hunger and loss, remembers the brutality of Imperial soldiers, the derision from her own people who sided with the Empire to protect their own interests.

She remembers watching the orphans struggle and strive and starve.

Coming back here with those memories? She had felt almost as displaced as Vaan surely does here, but -

"Does that mean we cannot try?" she asks, her tone soft. "Or is such friendship we built crumbling in the face of walls and ink stains?"

He flinches; she almost feels sorry.

Vaan looks down at his hands, curls and uncurls his fingers. "...It's different. I don't feel like I belong here. I'm a street rat, Ashe. Vaan Ratsbane, right? Palaces? Dresses? Princesses? Queens? I don't know anything about this except that I'm not a part of it."

"Vaan - just because I am Queen, does that mean I am destined to live alone?"

It's a question she asks herself often, and it is unfair to ask him for an answer. She knows this.

For a moment, he is silent, and then he shakes his head. "No. I'll - I'll try. Ashe. I just -" he stops. "I need to go. But I'll see you later."

Ashe nods, and watches him leave (again).

* * *

><p>That night, she pens a letter to Basch asking how he is. And sends it the next day.<p>

The response she gets is full of the wry Basch-humor she always enjoyed as a child. She actually laughs reading it, whether it be from nostalgia or actual amusement matters not.

And, she's fairly certain the half-cleaned coeurl pelt she finds on her floor a few days later is a coronation gift from Fran and Balthier, but she finds her gratitude wanes with the rank smell, though her smile does not.

* * *

><p>Vaan is sleeping in her bed when she finds him, stark white bandages wrapped tight 'round his torso. The moment the door opens, though, he wakes and looks straight at her, tension melting to a smile. "Hey," he says.<p>

"Run into trouble?" she asks.

"A little," he half-shrugs and sits up. "Mostly, the bandages are for show. Just a couple of cuts didn't heal all the way before I'd had too much healing. You know."

Ashe nods and sits at the foot of the bed.

"So... I was thinking..."

And she can't quite repress the grin, because he always started his craziest ideas with that sentence.

"So, I know we've been like..." he pauses, "Really having problems, so why don't you come see my ship? Penelo and I'll take you on an adventure!"

"Vaan, I can't -"

Penelo cuts her off. "We never said you had a choice, Ashe. See, we're pirates now, and pirates _kidnap_ royalty, not ask for their permission to do things."

It's then Vaan leaps out of bed, apparently not injured at all (_for show_, indeed), and he grabs her hand and tugs her towards Penelo, and by then, she's laughing too hard to really protest, and Penelo grins at her - looks older than last they met - and Vaan says, "We'll show you our ship," he pauses, turns to her, "It's fantastic."

Ashe blinks, then nods, clasps Vaan's hand tighter.


End file.
